Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HOSPITAL HEROES, by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HOSPITAL HEROES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Not in the glory of battles
Last Line: Theirs be a lasting fame!
Subject(s): Health; Heroism; Hospitals; World War I; Heroes; Heroines; First World War


[In honor of the sixty American soldiers
who during the World War allowed themselves
to be inoculated with trench fever, that
the disease might be studied and conquered.]

Not in the glory of battles,
Not in the cannonades' crash,
Not where the musketry rattles,
Not where the signals flash,
But to the sturdily stoic
Hospital waiting and woe,
Thither, with hearts heroic,
Stoutly our soldiers go.

There they will charge a foeman
Armed with a desperate might;
Persian nor Greek nor Roman
Had such a foe to fight.
There in the grim and glooming
Grip of a living grave,
There in the heat consuming,
They will be cheerily brave.

"Forward against the fever!"
Thus is the onset made;
Crafty and cruel deceiver
Lies he in ambuscade.
There in the horrible shadows,
There where the spectres are,
Creeping through twilight meadows,
There they must wage their war.

Hail to the new crusaders,
Genuine knights are these,
Facing the fiercest invaders,
Conquering foul disease.
And, when the final story
Honors the hero's name,
Theirs be a grateful glory,
Theirs be a lasting fame!





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